Hmm. Why would the entity feel disrespected by how many clusters the workers use? I actually am aware that this is an allegory for something else. Moreover, I think that I disagree you with about the something else (although I am not sure since I am not entirely sure what’s your position about the something else is). Which is to say, I think that this allegory misses crucial aspects of the original situation and loses the crux of the debate.
I think that this allegory misses crucial aspects of the original situation
That makes sense! As gjm noted, sometimes unscrupulous authors sneakily construct an allegory with the intent of leading the reader to a particular conclusion within the context of the allegory with the hope that the reader will map that conclusion back onto the real-world situation in a particular way, without doing the work of actually showing that the allegory and the real-world situation are actually analogous in the relevant aspects.
I don’t want to be guilty of that! This is a story about bleggs and rubes that I happened to come up with in the context of trying to think about something else (and I don’t want to be deceptive about that historical fact), but I definitely agree that people shouldn’t map the story onto some other situation unless they actually have a good argument for why that mapping makes sense. If we wanted to discuss the something else rather than the bleggs and rubes, we should do that on someone else’s website. Not here.
I mean, yes, there’s the allusion in the title! (The post wasn’t originally written for being shared on Less Wrong, it just seemed sufficiently sanitized to be shareable-here-without-running-too-afoul-of-anti-politics-norms after the fact.)
I read the title as just an allusion to Eliezer’s OP on bleggs and rubes. (Otoh, without having read the article just linked, I’m familiar with “egg” as transsexual jargon for someone exploring TS feelings, who (the ideology has it) will inevitably in the end “hatch” into a full-on TS.)
Hmm. Why would the entity feel disrespected by how many clusters the workers use? I actually am aware that this is an allegory for something else. Moreover, I think that I disagree you with about the something else (although I am not sure since I am not entirely sure what’s your position about the something else is). Which is to say, I think that this allegory misses crucial aspects of the original situation and loses the crux of the debate.
That makes sense! As gjm noted, sometimes unscrupulous authors sneakily construct an allegory with the intent of leading the reader to a particular conclusion within the context of the allegory with the hope that the reader will map that conclusion back onto the real-world situation in a particular way, without doing the work of actually showing that the allegory and the real-world situation are actually analogous in the relevant aspects.
I don’t want to be guilty of that! This is a story about bleggs and rubes that I happened to come up with in the context of trying to think about something else (and I don’t want to be deceptive about that historical fact), but I definitely agree that people shouldn’t map the story onto some other situation unless they actually have a good argument for why that mapping makes sense. If we wanted to discuss the something else rather than the bleggs and rubes, we should do that on someone else’s website. Not here.
FWIW, I predicted it would be an allegory of transsexuality even before I read it or any of the comments.
I mean, yes, there’s the allusion in the title! (The post wasn’t originally written for being shared on Less Wrong, it just seemed sufficiently sanitized to be shareable-here-without-running-too-afoul-of-anti-politics-norms after the fact.)
I read the title as just an allusion to Eliezer’s OP on bleggs and rubes. (Otoh, without having read the article just linked, I’m familiar with “egg” as transsexual jargon for someone exploring TS feelings, who (the ideology has it) will inevitably in the end “hatch” into a full-on TS.)